Captain Future 20 - The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946) Read online

  “Not all of us,” said Curt. “Remember, we first saw that the Moon was missing away out yonder on Asteroid Six-Ninety-Seven — surely too far from any fantastic machine to befuddle our minds. Also we have sailed right through the position in space the Moon ought to occupy.”

  “Do you suppose that there’s been a displacement of molecules,” suggested Joan.

  Curt looked at her sharply. “No. Remember we’ve found no spectroscopic reaction.”

  “All you’re doing is eliminating the possibilities, one by one,” complained Otho.

  “Let the lad alone,” the Brain scolded the android. “By eliminating possibilities, we get closer to the truth.”

  Curt seemed musing in a realm whole light-years away. His hands moved as if in a dream, cutting the Comet’s speed and knifing them into the atmosphere of Mother Earth. The ship made a wide spiral and braked, to drop on the square deck atop the great gleaming spire of Government Tower.

  As Captain Future threw open the airlock and stepped to the roof, two armed guards brought their proton rifles to the ready.

  “Identify yourself,” said one.

  “We’ve been waiting for them, sentry!” interposed a seam-faced, white-thatched man in the uniform of a marshal of the Planet Police. He was Ezra. “Come on, Captain Future and the rest of you — straight to the President!”

  Curt Newton seemed suddenly to awaken.

  “That’s it, Simon, he said. “All possibilities eliminated except the one true fact. The Moon wasn’t destroyed. She couldn’t have been snatched away or changed into something else.”

  “She must still be there then,” growled Otho.

  Captain Future snapped his fingers in triumph.

  “Right, Otho! She’s still there!”

  His companions clustered around him.

  “Tell us!” they pleaded.

  “Just a moment,” begged Curt Newton.

  “You can think while you walk,” said Ezra Gurney.

  He led the group across the landing stage and down a flight of stairs. On the floor below, where waited another familiar figure — burly, grim-eyed Halk Anders, commander of the System’s police organization.

  “Quite a gathering of notables,” muttered Otho. “But I don’t see any medals being shoved at us.”

  “Medals will wait, Otho,” said Anders. “You may get double decorations — or just epitaphs.”

  “If there’s any of us left to make funerals worth while,” added Ezra Gurney. “The Moon, two thousand miles in diameter, has been blotted out of existence!”

  “Joan told us,” said Captain Future. “You said President Carthew wants us? Lead on.”

  Down more stairs, and into the office of the President of the Solar System.

  James Carthew was gray-haired, distinguished-looking, a big-framed man, a brilliant scholar, who, in his younger days, had been an athlete. In two of the interplanetary wars he’d also been a daring officer of fighting men. Now, at the height of his career and powers, he was the beloved president of all habitable worlds within the space-latitudes dominated by Old Sol.

  He looked up from his desk as the group entered.

  “Captain Future!” he cried. “Welcome to you and your friends. Once more the united worlds depend on your wisdom and courage.”

  “What shall we do first, Mr. President?” answered Newton.

  “The Moon has vanished,” replied Carthew. “Undoubtedly you know the facts by now, and realize the implications are tremendous. It may indicate that some cosmic danger threatens to snatch other worlds — perhaps our own — into oblivion, too.”

  SLOWLY Captain Future nodded. “I agree so far, sir,” he said. “What specific theories have been advanced?”

  “Thousands,” said the President. “The Science Committees are fighting, arguing, debating, as usual. What’s your own opinion?”

  “A speculative one,” said Curt. “I believe the Moon is still where it has always been. Our instruments show there’s no dust or vapor — no visible remains — not even a spectroscopic trace. An explosion or chemical change would have left behind debris. We find nothing our normal instruments can identify. Therefore the Moon is still there — in a dimension beyond our own, slipped there, in its entirety, by agencies not now apparent.”

  The President stared at him blankly. Then he nodded his gray head.

  “You’ve traveled from one dimension to another before, you know about these things,” Carthew said. “But I know little about such matters. Explain further.”

  “Take a two-dimensional universe, sir. It’s a plane, bounded by length and breadth, like the top of this desk.” He laid his big hand upon it. “My hand’s there on the desk-top. But I take it way, through height, the third dimension —” He lifted his hand. “Not a trace left. Right?”

  “Right,” agreed President Carthew. “Then the Moon, which has three-dimensions, has vanished by the Fourth dimension?”

  “Not necessarily, sir. The fourth dimension has been judged to be time.” He thought a moment. “I’ll illustrate this way. I’m three-dimensional, and I’m here in the office. But suppose I took ten seconds to leave and close the door. I’d have traveled ten seconds in time — the fourth dimension — and would be present here no more, but somewhere else.”

  “I follow you again,” said the President. “The Moon has gone — where?”

  “Into another dimension between the four we normally know. Suppose we call it Dimension X. The Moon’s there, away from our sight and sense.”

  “And Grag’s there, too,” said Otho. “Poor Grag — my best friend, my old partner! What is Dimension X doing to him?”

  Chapter 3: Grag in Dimension X

  WHEN Grag had been directed by Captain Future to remain on the Moon, in charge of the routine laboratory work while the other Futuremen eluded the unwelcome effort to lionize them, he was pleased at his luck.

  His great robot voice boomed to little Eek, the moon-pup that looked like a toy bear come to life.

  “At least we’re spared the sneers of Otho, and the antics of that little monstrosity, Oog. And if the Authorities come here and find only me — well, I won’t fight off any medals. One would look good, soldered on here.”

  His mighty metal fist struck the huge curve of his torso, and clanged like a super alarm bell. Grag was like a seven-foot suit of medieval armor come to life. His great bulbous head was set with two photo-electric eyes and housed a brain of colloid metal — a brain not quite as stupid as Otho liked to pretend, but nevertheless the least acute of all the Futuremen. What he did have was strength. He was a living derrick, a walking tractor, for power.

  Just now he was in the upper wing of the great laboratory-headquarters which the Futuremen maintained on the Moon, sealed from the outer airlessness, the cold of lunar day, by thick walls and airtight locks and panels. He was watching the progress of a dozen minor experiments, marking the result of each on a pad alongside. Eek hopped along near him, nuzzling the huge corrugated-soled feet.

  “I know, I know,” crooned Grag in a voice like an affectionate klaxon. “You’re hungry, Eek. Well, come on, we’ll have lunch.”

  He led the way to a cubical room, made more than ordinary size to accommodate his gigantic proportions. From a work-bench he caught a fistful of broken metal, worn-out small parts from repaired motors and experimental engines. These he laid on the floor under Eek’s nose.

  “Some of this had chromium in it,” he told Eek. “You like chromium, Eek. I’ll have copper, as usual.”

  He took a big lump of red-glowing metal and fed it into the special digestion chopper inside his torso.

  “And now,” he said, “Uncle Grag will tell you a story.”

  Eek hopped up on Grag’s knee. He sat up, nibbling on a flawed cog, like a squirrel on a nut.

  “It all began with Roger Newton and Simon Wright, who built this laboratory,” said Grag. “With them was Elaine, Roger Newton’s wife. They made many things — time-travelers, copper-temperers, at
om-busters, interplanetary fuels. They made Otho, too, on a day when they weren’t up to par. But the most wonderful, useful thing they ever made was your Uncle Grag.”

  The robot’s massive jointed shoulders shook with mirth.

  “After a triumph like that, it was nothing for Roger Newton to make Simon Wright’s brain immortal by transferring it to a crystal case,” he continued. “And, after Victor Corvo killed Roger and Elaine Newton, it was your Uncle Grag who raised their boy Curt to be Captain Future, with Otho and Simon Wright helping a little. When the Futuremen went cruising through space, Victor Corvo had the bad judgment to fight us and, instead of Victor Corvo, he became Vanquished Corvo — ha! ha! ha!”

  Grag’s laughter was like a metal sea raging against metal rocks.

  “That’s what men call a joke, Eek. Victor, vanquished — understand? Well, when Ul Quorn tried to avenge his father, Victor Corvo, we chased him right up against the sun. And he whiffed away in flame, ship and all —”

  The robot broke off suddenly.

  “Eek,” he said slowly. “Don’t you feel as if the floor was somehow slanting?”

  Eek hopped down, as if to investigate. Grag rose from where he sat. His big frame tottered.

  “Things are out of plumb — but how could they be?” There was a quiver in the booming voice. “The walls look funny, too. Somehow angles aren’t right angles. I wonder —”

  He tramped to the door and opened it.

  Things were black out there.

  The upper wing of the laboratory was dimly lighted and several figures were grouped there, studying the experiments. Grag’s photo-electric eyes, keener in the dark than normal human optics, counted five intruders.

  ONE of the five strangers was dressed in brilliant turban and Martian cloak, and was human, but the others were beings that even Grag, who had been everywhere on the Comet’s star-spanning flights, could not identify.

  They were two legged and upright but grotesque of action and proportion.

  Grag could see their pallid bodies, scantily dressed in metallic-gleaming jerkins and kilts, belted around with strange weapons. Their legs were short and bandy, like those of a frog, and their huge, flat, flapping feet were clad in shiny sandals. By contrast, their arms were long and brawny. Their hands had only three fingers.

  At first glance they seemed to have no necks at all to support round hairless heads, which had mere holes for ears and noses, dark wide eyes and mouths like gaping slashes clear across the face. Though stocky, they were less than average human height. Even the man in the turban was shorter than customary.

  “Space-burglars!” growled Grag. “I’ll scoop them up — I can do it with one arm — and keep them for Captain Future!”

  He clanked out into the open. Five faces turned to stare at him.

  “Here comes one of the Futuremen!” cried the man with the Martian clothes, and his voice struck a responsive chord in Grag’s memory.

  “I know who you are!” roared Grag in return challenge. “Aren’t you —”

  “It’s Grag, the robot!” interrupted the speaker. “He’s strong but stupid. Trap him!”

  A ray from somewhere played. There was a clang and a vibration. Darkness enveloped Grag as if dark water had closed over his body. The ray caused five plane surfaces of metal to close around him — four as walls and a fifth as a roof above. He was like a very large and grim rabbit caught in a box trap.

  He stood still, great metal legs braced, huge spading-forks of hands doubling into fists at his sides. After a moment, his photo-electric eyes gauged the small chamber which had clamped around him. He moved — and opposite him something else moved.

  Grag peered at it. This thing in the trap with him was as big as himself, a burly, oversized human shape, as tensely cautious as himself. Plainly it was an enemy, a guard, sent to subdue him.

  “Huh!” grunted Grag. “The champion, are you? Bully of the gang? I’ll fix you quick!”

  He shifted his feet, lifted his left hand and cocked his right, assuming the boxing stance.

  At once the stranger fell into a like posture of defense.

  “So you’re left-handed!” said Grag. “A professional, eh? All right, come out punching and I’m going to knock your head off into your own lap.”

  He sprang and the stranger sprang to meet him.

  Grag drove his left at the stranger’s head. It landed with a solid ringing bang as he shifted and threw his right. Both punches scored, and he jumped backward, expecting to see his opponent, down and helpless in a crushed heap.

  But the burly figure opposite him was bobbing and weaving without the slightest sign of injury. Grag’s fiercest blows had not won!

  “That was only the overture before the main performance,” Grag taunted. “What’s the idea, dodging around like that? Come on and fight.”

  He rushed, and his enemy met him halfway. Grag threw a dozen battering-ram blows. It was an attack that should have battered down a brick wall but he felt no wilting under his smashing knuckles. Winding up with all his metal-muscled strength, he planted a final super-robot blow. He landed, and the impact of his own blow sent him reeling back out with a resounding clangor of metal joints. Then he raised up, glared, and whooped for joy.

  This time his giant adversary was down!

  “That does it!” boomed Grag.

  He scrambled to his feet.

  BUT as he did so, the other figure also was getting up, a little unsteadily.

  “Hey!” Grag thundered. “Don’t you know when you’ve had enough?”

  He moved forward cautiously. So did the stranger. Grag peered — and flinched. The stranger flinched, too.

  “It’s my own reflection!”

  And so it was. For the first time since the fight had begun, Grag paused to study what he saw. The burly metal figure was an exact duplicate of himself.

  “It’s a mirror!” he cried. “No, not a mirror — a surface of gleaming metal! I’ve been fighting my own image!”

  “The farce is over,” said a twittery voice above him.

  He glanced up. A small port was open in the ceiling-plate of the trap. Several pallid faces, with large glowing eyes, were peering down at him.

  “The gas,” said another twittering voice.

  “Grag is a metal robot,” said the man in Martian clothes. “Use the magnetic beam. It will lock his iron arms and legs.”

  A pale light stabbed down from above. Before Grag could dodge the beam struck him and the robot became helpless as though frozen in ice — a silent gleaming statue.

  From above two of the pale men swung down. Grag, whose brain was not affected by the ray, heard them call to their companions overhead. Coils of wire were flung down.

  Deftly the two strangers wound this stuff around Grag, and he was soon swaddled like an insect in the web of a mighty spider.

  “Turn off the ray,” called one of his captors.

  It blinked off. Grag felt his powers return.

  He strove against his bonds, but they were strong and snug, and beneath them he was helpless.

  “Take away the trap,” was the next order, and the walls fell away. Grag saw the dim upper wing of the corridor, and several more pale people ringing around him. But the man whom he had recognized was not present.

  “Forward march,” a captor bade him. “Your legs aren’t tied.”

  Grag decided to act as Captain Future would have acted — pretend submission, watching meanwhile for a chance to escape. He obediently clumped up the stairs, through an airlock door to the outside — the outside which he knew so well.

  But Grag did not recognize it now. He had expected to step out into the familiar great expanse of rocky floor, its great central pinnacle of sky-aspiring stone, its horizon-ringing crater wall.”

  And this was all changed. He had emerged upon soil, crumbly and a little damp. The lock-door of the laboratory was familiar, but it opened into a little clearing among weird, fleshy plants that must make a jungle of immense extent — he
could not tell, for things were dim here, too.

  The sky was of a greenish gloom, and around him hung what the Moon had not known for eons — air, heavy air, with a slight warm breeze swaying the plants. He heard a distant trilling that might be insects or birds.

  Far off a mighty movement crashed among the jungle growths.

  “Why,” he stammered. “This isn’t the Moon — not our Moon!”

  “Right, and wrong,” said one of the twittering pale captors. “It’s the Moon, yes, but it is not your Moon. We’ve taken it for ours. And you’re looking at a very few of the alterations we have achieved.”

  Chapter 4: The Pursuit of the Moon

  BY THE time the Futuremen and Joan Randall were back in the Comet, which still remained parked on the landing-stage atop Government Tower, Curt Newton had mapped out a plan of procedure. With their Moon laboratory gone, their best remaining equipment and files of experimental data were in the workshop of the trim-lined little space-craft. They were grouped around a table, littered with papers from a huge folder marked. “Extra Dimensions.”

  “You talk as if Grag was still alive,” said Otho hopefully.

  “I think they’ll keep him captive, whoever they are,” said the Brain. “He’s a masterpiece of scientific construction, and only scientists would be able to steal a whole satellite. As scientists, they’ll want to use him for their own purposes.”

  Otho got up from where he sat. “Simon Wright, are you suggesting that Grag would turn traitor?” he asked fiercely.

  “I said nothing like that, Otho,” said the Brain soothingly. “I know Grag better, even, than you do. I helped make him and train him.”

  “Why should they grab the Moon?” inquired Joan.

  “I think I know,” said Captain Future. “We Futuremen would understand and resist. So they moved to take away the Moon, and all of us with it. As it turned out, they got only Grag.”

  “But we’ll get him back,” said Otho sternly.

  “We have some data to help us,” resumed Curt, assembling papers. “Here are the researches of Harris Haines, who penetrated the fifth dimension and who lost his life there. Remember how we followed him? Here’s our report, too, of going into the dimension and returning. It’s something with which to work.”